Senator Murray Secures $208 Million to Strengthen Washington State Grid Against Extreme Weather and Expand Transmission

In the Fiscal Year 2024 funding bills authored and passed into law by Senator Murray, she formally established and funded the Grid Deployment Office (GDO) at $60 million which oversees and runs the GRIP program and other important grid enhancement programs from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that made today’s awards possible.

Murray, the chief appropriator for the Department of Energy hails a significant federal investment to upgrade miles of transmission, increase grid capacity for growing electricity demand, and deliver good-paying jobs

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced more than $208 million in federal funding to expand transmission and strengthen the resiliency of Washington state’s grid. In addition to chairing the full Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray chairs the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee and authors the government spending bills in the Senate that fund the Department of Energy, ensuring that Washington state priorities are reflected in the work that the DOE does.

The selected projects announced today through the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program will deploy new, innovative transmission and distribution infrastructure and technology upgrades to enable significantly more gigawatts (GW) of grid capacity, speed up interconnection for new clean energy projects, support nearly good-paying jobs, and catalyze public and private investment to bring reliable, affordable, clean energy to Americans. 

• $45,781,599 will go toward the Skagit River Valley Transformation for Climate Resiliency project with Puget Sound Energy. Puget Sound Energy will provide an additional $45,781,599 to support the project.
  • Read more about the project HERE.
• $85,664,781 will go toward the Lolo-Oxbow Transmission Upgrade and Optimization project with Avista Utilities (also funding grid work in Idaho and Oregon). Avista Utilities will provide an additional $87,296,824 to support the project.
  • Read more about the project HERE.
• $77,021,741 will go toward the Increasing Energy Resilience via Technology Investment Acceleration (INERTIA) project with E Source (also funding grid work in Idaho, Montana, and Nevada). E Source will provide an additional $88,413,069 to support the project.
  • Read more about the project HERE.

“I was proud to secure this funding for Washington state—making our grid more resilient to climate change and extreme weather events like the unprecedented heat we are seeing more and more in the Pacific Northwest really matters in practically all of our daily lives,” said Senator Murray. “When we negotiated the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, I made certain that investments in grid infrastructure made it to the President’s desk—and, as Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, making sure the Department of Energy was prepared to make these major awards possible was an important priority for me in writing last year’s spending bills. This is an infrastructure investment that is an absolute must have—our electrical grid must be resilient enough to provide reliable power for our communities especially during severe weather events.”

Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Senator Murray played a pivotal role in passing as then Assistant Majority Leader, the GRIP program is investing in communities across the country to enhance grid flexibility and improve the resilience of the power system against growing threats of extreme weather and climate change.

In this round of funding, DOE received applications requesting more than seven times the amount of funding available, an oversubscription rate of nearly 800%, demonstrating the tremendous need for these types of investments across the country. Improving grid resilience in the face of extreme weather events was a key need nationwide.

As a senior appropriator and now Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray has long worked to boost funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity, which leads the Department’s efforts to modernize our nation’s power grid and ensure it is resilient to disruptions. She secured $280 million in funding for the Office of Electricity in Fiscal Year 2024 government funding bill. Importantly, in the Fiscal Year 2024 government funding bill which Senator Murray wrote, she formally established and funded the Grid Deployment Office (GDO) at $60 million which oversees and runs the GRIP program and other important grid enhancement programs from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that made today’s awards possible.

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